Contemporaneity

Contemporaneity, like the related term “contemporary,” is deployed in the art context as a counter to the modern and modernist ideals. However, whereas the contemporary is generally understood as also referring to a chronological time period closer to us than the modern, contemporaneity shifts focus away from the teleological relation such temporal formations still tend to imply. Contemporaneity instead allows for a horizontal expansion of practices, developed in different circumstances and equally valid as expressions of contemporary society. Whereas Modernism is still rooted in the primacy and universal appeal of a Western cultural viewpoint, the concept of contemporaneity allows for non-Western artistic practices and discourses to be seen as equally valid contributions to the contemporary art world. As Zdenka Badovinac points out, it is based on a recognition that under conditions of global exchange, there is a legitimate basis for shared experiences that create the grounds for a sense of participation in trans-cultural discussions about forms of knowledge that escape traditional modernist frameworks; a space for discursive exchange in spite of the deployment of multiple and differing cultural and historical frameworks.[1] Thus Juliane Rebentisch claims that to be contemporary, “would consequently be much more than merely participating in chronological time. To the contrary, to be true to one’s own time, to be a good contemporary, would mean adding certain discontinuities into the continuum of chronological time.”[2]

[1] Zdenka Badovinac, Contemporaneity as Points of Connection, in: e-flux journal 11 (Dezember 2009). [Read online]
[2] Juliane Rebentisch, The Contemporaneity of Contemporary Art, in: New German Critique 124, Jg. 42 Heft 1 (Februar 2015), S. 229.